Online Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

When you are running what could be considered a small business and are looking for ways to promote your online presence, the strategies are really no different to the traditional marketing efforts that you would usually employ. Despite the fact that you are looking to increase brand awareness over the internet, you are still going to be looking for an increased customer base whilst getting your brand noticed by a larger audience than before. Here we will look at some of the most effective digital marketing strategies for online marketing. They will help any small business to cover all aspects of the online marketing campaign, from creating the content right up to sales and delivery aspects.

Search engine marketing

Getting a small business noticed online is essential in order to generate interest in the product or services that you are offering. Search engine marketing is the first step of this process and it can be divided into two components:

Many small businesses opt for the first method because it can offer a lot of potential for a smaller outlay. A successful SEO tactic is fairly simple in theory, and essentially you are trying to make your site more visible to the search engine queries by optimising your business website. This can be achieved by adding engaging content to your site and following Google keyword etiquette. If you opt for PSA, you are paying Google to promote your website via an Adwords campaign. For either approach to pay dividends in the way of increased traffic, you will need some patience as results will take weeks rather than days.

We are living in the age of the smartphone and businesses have caught onto the fact that 75% of mobile searches will end up in a follow-up action. This is a very powerful statistic and to take advantage of these figures your business needs to ensure that the website looks good when viewed via a smartphone browser. You can also offer native apps to your potential audience. If you use WordPress to design and maintain your website, they have plug-ins and appropriate themes that can enhance the mobile viewing experience effectively. Designing a native app for your website may not be cheap but the result should more than make up for the initial outlay.

This is probably the most vital form of online market today and you ignore this fact at your peril. Once you have designed a presentable website and have laid down the foundations for delivery, you need to ensure that your content is top of the pops. Great content is the aspect of your site that will ensure your customers hang around and start buying your wares, and they’ll keep coming back as long as the content keeps being refreshed. Never try to swap quality for quantity because the search engine will soon find you out and the customers will be replaced by digital tumbleweeds. Every time you publish a new page or article, read it thoroughly and ask yourself if it really belongs on your website?

Social media marketing

Social media platforms are the leviathans of the internet age and they are not going away anytime soon. Social media marketing is an immensely powerful tool that small businesses can use to their advantage and it yields some spectacular results. You can gain a huge following for your brand if you establish a decent presence across the major networks. And once you create this audience you will need to interact with them. It is a slow burner that may seem a little long winded, but if you treat your fans with respect and offer something of interest to them you will be rewarded twenty-fold. Social media traffic will convert into customers but you should avoid the hard sell and simply entertain them with a few subliminal tactics thrown in for good measure.

Having good social profiles gives a good impression of your company and also gives you a chance of getting that profile listed in the search results. Our own profile on Linkedin is a good example of that: Lojix on Linkedin.

Local seo marketing

If you run a business that has a physical presence in your neighbourhood, you should also employ local SEO strategies. This differs from seo marketing in that it promotes your business in a local search and really helps the search engine to pick you out of the local bunch who can offer a similar service. In order to achieve this rather juicy result, you will need to brush up on your Google seo best practices and really take in all of the advice on offer. Nobody said that online marketing for small businesses would ever be easy, but at least there are answers for pretty much every question you can ask.

Luck?

To be honest, luck doesn’t really have a place in this area of promotion, you simply need to follow protocol and work pretty hard at convincing the digital powers that be to notice your website and eventually you could be sitting on top of a very attractive pile of benefits.

We've been with Lojix for about 2 years. They were recommended by our web developer and he was not wrong. Having joined the Lojix team we found ourselves very quickly on Google page 1 with both Google Shop and Google Ads for just about every product we sell (over 300), and for by far the majority of our products we also feature organically on page 1 or 2 - that's even more satisfying and clearly demonstrates the sound advice and support they're able to provide website administrators. As a consequence our sales have rocketed. Lojix have a very understated approach i.e. they are not the flashy, pushy, irritating sort of SEO organisation that pester businesses every day, promising the earth but usually delivering nothing. No. Lojix just get on with the job, quietly and professionally, responding quickly to any product adjustments required or to the need to adjust bids on Ads. etc. We would wholeheartedly recommend Lojix to any business looking for an organisation that can actually deliver, and deliver without compromising your profit!